Tony Mills

posted 14 Feb 2015, 05:51 by Paul Woodward

Interview by Woody

Born
and Bred in the West Midlands Tony Mills is one of the most legendary figures
in the Melodic Rock / AOR genre from the area. He rose to fame in the Eighties
with one of the finest AOR acts to ever emerge from the UK let alone the
Midlands in SHY. He moved on musically in the Nineties and even gave music up
for a short time, before returning to the underground AOR scene quite
prolifically with various projects and even a couple of reunion albums with
SHY. He joined popular Norwegian melodic hard rockers TNT in 2006 and what
followed was a rollercoaster and a constant source of gossip amongst genre
fans. A Heart Attack in an airport made Tony face his mortality in dramatic
fashion and even meant he needed to move to Norway in order for his schedule to
be less stressful. His time with TNT is bittersweet as fans struggled to accept
him and when he did start winning them over his position and relationships
within the band became a constant source of rumour and unrest. He left TNT two
years ago and has spent the vast majority of his time concentrating on his
health and a new deeply personal album ‘Over My Dead Body’. Woody caught up
with Tony following a preview of his impressive new album to discuss it and is
shocked to learn this could be the last album Tony will ever release.

Following
your career over the past few years it seems like it’s been a real
rollercoaster and at times quite traumatic in some ways. From serious ill
health, a move to Norway and a much gossiped about period of unrest in the TNT
camp. Has life settled down for you now as you push forward with this new solo
album?

No. Life hasn't settled down for me at all. I'm
currently in a cardio rehab unit for nine weeks where I think they've got me
mixed up with a marathon runner.

But as my next career move is probably more video
shoots and live work anyway, I guess it will prove par for the course.

I haven't really stopped working on the record since
I left TNT in August 2013. In fact we only mastered the album about two weeks
ago, so the process has taken the best part of two years.

Now I'm being juggled around between four different
fitness trainers, until May this year, before I can get back out and get on
with the music.

This
album to me feels like a musical autobiography in its flow and of course
lyrical content. Was this album cathartic to write or was it always your
intention to create a deeply personal album?

Having reached the point of no return with TNT after
seven years, I had every intention of sitting down and writing another solo
album. But I didn't actually plan that it would happen like this.

I actually started writing with Tommy Denander and
Robert Sall. Relatively commercial ideas and I found myself needing to express
feelings over everything I'd been through and writing commercial hooks wasn't
satisfying me at all. Anger started appearing in the songs and I realised in
the end, that I had to formulate all the ideas and feelings properly and it
kind of happened at the same time as I was getting demands to reform Siam. I
could really feel another Siam album on the horizon, but it wasn't happening
with the band members, so it evolved into an album that could easily have been
a Siam album, but in the end, it became very much a solo approach with some
very good co-writers. The deeper I reached, the darker it got, until I reached
a point where the reality of the situation dawned on me, that I had actually
been dead, but I had been brought back, whether I had a choice in the matter or
not and that I had to realise I needed to look at life very differently from
now on, because I had been so bitter about it all and there was no reason to be
that way anymore. But writing music about these events made a lot of sense to
me,

The
subject matter of course is mainly about your health issues and your time with
TNT. There’s one song that has a particularly acerbic lyrics, is there anything
you think you may regret in there or is staying true to your words something
you intend to stand firm on?

It was pretty obvious after the last eight months I
was in the band, that there was no love lost between us and that it didn't
matter how you looked at it, we thought in very different ways and wanted very
different things. I have no doubt whatsoever, that it remains the case. Of
course, I have had fans sending me mail and asking the predictable question
regarding the 'vacancy' in the band. But regardless of the underhanded efforts
to display a modicum of friendship, my long term memory is very good and I will
not be alienating the TNT fans any further, by making the same mistake a second
time.

I was unpopular for joining (although I had a lot of
thanks for helping the vehicle of Ronni Le Tekro back on the road in 2006) and
just as unpopular for leaving and I would be out of my mind if I planned any
sort of repeat performance.

I’m
sure it would be hard for you to pick favourites from what is a deeply personal
album, but if there are a few songs you could highlight and give us the story
behind them, so fans can get see the story behind the music, that would be a
great insight!

'No Love Lost' was really about just how low
everything had gone, including my health after hundreds of shows in different
countries, racing through airports to connecting flights and putting my own
well being last on the priority list. It was pretty obvious that nothing was
going to save the situation and nobody cared anyway, so the inevitable
happened.

'We Should Be On By Now' has recently been released
as a single and is a very personal song for me. As you have said, of course,
the whole album is such, but I started to see two different people in myself
when it came to stage performances and one guy really had no connection to the
other. I was starting to switch off from who I really was whenever I got onto a
stage to the point where I couldn't remember anything of any of the shows after
I'd left the venues. It became almost remote control and I had little say in
what happened or how. I would just be dying to get on the stage, so that I
wouldn't have to hang around for any unnecessary reasons in a room where I
couldn't understand what was being said. My voice and my fitness had reached an
optimum point, but I had lost all reason for what I was doing in the end.

'Gate 21' was the place where the lights went out
and I was met with very little.

In retrospect, I couldn't actually believe that the
band took me back there for a photo shoot some months after, like it was some
sort of novelty. I don't think I had the strength to complain. It was certainly
a point of no return where the bass player Victor Borge and a stranger, Trine
Reime Fitje, helped save my life with the paramedics. Indeed, 'Bitter Suite'
will be ingrained in my memory forever, because after they bring you back to
life, you wake to the sound of your own screaming.

'My Death' by Jacques Brel, is a song that has
haunted me since I was a kid and it was made for the situation as well as that
it just belongs there really.

After life returned, many memories washed over me
and '4 In The Morning' and 'Somewhere in London' are very much about earlier
times in my life that reminded me how happy I was when I was younger, in the
80's and 90's. Robert Sall's performances and indeed his writing styles were
instrumental in bringing out the right emotions in me to be able to open up how
I felt and be able to sing the words with the right feel.

Obviously
performing live here in the UK is not an easy thing to do but if the right
opportunity or Festival came knocking, would you be open to performing as a
solo artist? Or would you prefer to take some time out following your very
hectic live schedule with TNT?

By the time I emerge from this place, it will have
been two years since my departure from the band. I already have people here in
Norway demanding to see the material live and it's important to shoot some
video footage of the songs, both in studio and probably live as well. It's
really the norm, I'll be looking to finalise a line up and rehearse as and when
I know the demand is there for the supply.

I
can’t talk to you and not bring up SHY! Steve Harris’s death was very tragic
whether you were a fan of his music or not, he was way too young and died of a
particular nasty disease, I feel heartbroken for his loved ones. Has closing
the book on SHY and this chapter of your life been particularly difficult as it
was a big part of you musical career?

It's not difficult for me to move on, because I
already had. I spoke to Steve a few months before he passed and we were equally
as ill, as I had lost my power of proper speech for a while along with my taste
and smell and I think we both knew that things were pretty much over and done
with. He was such an amazing talent, that he still finished the recording and
did an awesome job of the final SHY album. Looking back, they were the prolific
part of my product releases, but not the live scene. We were a pretty self
destructive force on the road and after we finished touring the States in 1990,
I was glad to get out of the band. Two or three albums ten years after, never
really resurrected the band to the standard we reached across the States, it
was evident that our time had passed really.

You
played two final shows with SHY a charity tribute in Steve’s hometown of
Birmingham and played a fond farewell show at well respected melodic rock
festival Firefest. What were the shows like to perform and did it ever feel
wrong knowing Steve wasn’t to the side of you on those stages?

For the youngest musician I ever worked with on
stage, he was someone that you really needed and were always glad to have there
as a constant that you knew wouldn't change. It didn't really matter how much
Carl Anthony Wright or Neil Hibbs could have rehearsed for the shows and as
nice as the guys are, it would never have been the same without Steve. I was
choked at Firefest and I know that even though I felt it was necessary to say a
final farewell to him on stage, I could barely get the words to come out.

From
the outside it seems like your taking it a little easier on the musical side of
things and you have been concentrating on your solo album, but do you have any
other projects or bands you have been working with lately that you can talk to
us about?

I've purposefully been avoiding as much as I can
during the recording of the record, because a part of me felt sure it would be
my last album and I wanted to get it finished and mixed properly by Neil Kernon
as a matter of my life's priority. But now, I don't know. I've been approached
by Neil to work on another awesome project and I never saw that coming at all.
My main priority is how fit I can be this year. It takes priority over
everything else otherwise there will be little point in thinking about music or
indeed, anything else.

Finally,
is there anything else you would like to state or say to Midlands Rocks
Readers?

My music ended up taking me away from my home in the
Midlands many years ago and I miss it a lot. I always felt that it was an
important source of musicians and raw talent for our rock world and I hope it
always will be. My great inspirations came from there and I suppose I could
never have expected to stay there forever. Although a lot of the music scene
has changed a lot since the 70's, the Midlands has long been recognised as an
iconic centre for rock and metal. I'm very proud to have grown up there and
been part of that culture as it developed out of one millennium into
another.